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America is far from perfect. We have achieved many great things in our history, but it has been despite our flaws, not because of them. And among the worst of our flaws is this country’s history of racism and white supremacy. Yes, not just the racism but the white supremacy, too. We on the Left post many words decrying white supremacists, but we rarely admit our country has elected many white supremacists POTUS, and they weren’t all Conservatives and/or Republicans and at least a few were Progressives and/or Democrats. As a Liberal, that bothers me. I want what’s best for everyone, and the color of one’s skin does not determine whether one is a human being or not. But there are many people, white people in particular, who feel this is not so; they feel that one’s skin color DOES determine how human one is. And sadly, these people often get elected to public office, where they are able to put their racist viewpoints into law. A President Donald J. Trump would be such a racist president.

It’s bad enough that Trump lies, and lies, and lies, and lies, and lies, and lies, and, just for good measure, engages in promoting conspiracy theories. (This is not to mention the xenophobia, misogyny, birtherism and bullying tactics.) But Donald Trump’s overt racism is probably one of the least admirable things about him. And yet, it’s precisely the reason he is so admired among many of his supporters. White supremacist organizations of all kinds have been openly endorsing Trump, while he has renounced or even denounced so few of them. He had to lie (there’s no other word for it) and say he didn’t know much about David Duke, after the former KKK Grand Wizard publicly endorsed him, despite the fact that several years ago Trump publicly commented on David Duke and his association with the Klan. So why hem and haw over publicly rejecting his endorsement? Trump knew Duke was connected to the Klan. Is that not enough to say he doesn’t want Duke’s support? Why say he has to know more about him before commenting? And if Trump doesn’t want the support of white supremacists, why does he so often retweet their tweets? (He can’t claim he didn’t know when their screen name has “white genocide” in it.)

Many of Trump’s fans like him because, as they tell it, “He says what I’m thinking.” If that’s true of you, then you’re not thinking good thoughts. In fact, you’re talking like someone who wants to take us back to the 1940s and 1950s, when white men were generally (if often wrongly) perceived to be the most admired people in the country. (Are you Pat Buchanan, by any chance?) And you have a problem for which you should seek treatment. Trump appeals to people like you because he uses “Othering”, where all your problems are blamed on people who aren’t like you. In other words, people who are non-white, non-Christian, and non-American. Others. Others who can be scapegoated. It’s the very ugly secret behind Trump’s success to win the nomination of the party that, let’s be truthful here, appeals as hard as it can to low-information, low-effort-thinking, less-educated, and less-intelligent voters. People who have opinions not based on reality. Of course, as part of their juvenile “I know you are but what am I?”-style of debating, they accuse us of not being based in reality, because the way we see the world doesn’t match the way they see the world. I’m not just talking about the difference between the way Liberals and Conservatives see the world, I’m talking about people who believe so many things that are provably false. And they base their voting choice on who they think could best solve the problems of the world as they see them, meaning both their problems and the world. These people are either not very intelligent, or very afraid of something that isn’t going to happen to them. Do conservative voters in the Midwest states really believe ISIS is going to come to America and bring death and Sharia Law to them? Just because they’re taking over a country thousands of miles away from here, that doesn’t have the same history as our country, that doesn’t have the same religious makeup as ours, that wasn’t enjoying the same freedoms as ours, doesn’t mean it’s going to happen here. I mean, c’mon! I thought you folks loved our military. Have you no faith in their ability to defend us from whatever it is you imagine is going to happen to us? (And you are imagining it. It isn’t going to happen.) And whatever it is you fear is going to happen, do you really think an overtly racist president is the best choice to be commanding your military? Say what you will about Hillary Clinton (and many of you Trump supporters have been doing just that, even though much of it isn’t true, meaning grounded in the real reality), she doesn’t see our oversized military as the go-to solution where tact and diplomacy would work better. And neither does Bernie Sanders. And neither should you.

I really, really hope our country is better than to elect a crass, petulant, childish racist as our president. We deserve the consequences if we do.

About Wayne A. Schneider

I'm a Liberal, Libertarian, Atheist Humanist. I believe that though the world is a dangerous place, it can be made better if we stop dividing ourselves by how we're different from each other, and reach out to each other through what we have in common. And that is that we are all human beings on this planet. Please remember that.

My one hope is that Silver’s number ultimately proves to be overly optimistic by several orders of magnitude. I seriously doubt that will be the case, of course, given the mental acuity implicit in such a large percentage of Americans. Tee-tiny example: we live in Colorado, not far from what many call the I-25 corridor, that major stretch of interstate that runs from the Mexican border northward damn near to Canada, with all sorts of easy-access exits into Amurkkka’s sacred heartland. There are folks in these parts who actually believe that’s the route “terrists’ will take when they invade us from Mexico, bringing ebola, zika, ISIS, drugs, and whatever other evil happens to be available, along with ’em. Many of the fear-laden are stocking up on food (I assume Jimmy Bakker food buckets do really well here) and guns and bullets so they will be able to save themselves — and Amurkkka — from people like Obama.

Fear, the operative word. That’s what Trump uses — the irrational and ridiculous fear, spread daily by Fox News mainly, the media in general, and himself. There need be no truth in the appeal to fear process — truth seldom fits anyway. Lies and distortions do, however, and when spewed in the general directions of dumb-asses, are quickly absorbed and applauded. Problem is, dumb-asses vote, especially for people who will “Make Amurkkka Grate Agin” and not allow dem commies to come a-marchin’ up I-25.

tephen Hawking is one of the most brilliant minds of our time, but he’s having a hard time understanding why so many people are going to vote for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. As The Associated Press reports, the famed British scientist told ITV’s morning show on Monday that he doesn’t get how Trump has gotten as far as he has, while calling the candidate “a demagogue who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator. . . . it will be interesting to see if Trump responds with a foul-mouthed tweet storm against Hawking in which he’s trashed as “a very mediocre physicist” who is also a “wheelchair-bound loser.”

Looks like it wastes a lot of water (maybe it’s getting recycled through the box under the swings and pumped back up to minimize waste. Otherwise, kind of cool. I don’t know if it’s timed so you can’t get wet, even if you want to, but if it is, that would take some of the fun out of it.

Meanwhile on that dying entity, the Tweeter…. a number of well-known anti-Russian parody accounts were suspended by @support over the weekend. While Russian troll accounts continue to spew a combination of lies, propaganda and racist tweets unaffected (I have had one death threat on Tweeter over #mh17 and #Russia). Tweeter displays its ‘useful idiocy’.